The Pleiades area (Annehouw)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Taurus (Tau) · Contains: IC 353 · Maia nebula · Merope nebula · NGC 1432 · NGC 1435 · The star 18Tau · The star Atlas (27Tau) · The star Celaeno (16Tau) · The star Electra (17Tau) · The star Merope (23Tau) · The star Pleione (28Tau) · The star Sterope I (21Tau) · The star Taygeta (19Tau) · The star ηTau

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The Pleiades area

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The Pleiades area

This is one of the last images using the Astrotrac device. It served me well, but was also a source of headaches. Unknown to me, the screws holding the motor inside the device had slowly come loose. The effect of that was that the tracking got more and more unreliable (which I did notice), so I resorted to very short subexposure times.

Back home, I opened up the device and found the problem. The screws by that time were totally loose. Would I have tried to repair it at my observing location (on top of the Roque de Los Muchachos...dark, but also very cold en extremely windy, I would certainly have lost those ;-)

Repairing it was as simple as breaking the warranty seal of the device, finding the loose screws and fastening them. Time to say goodbye, so I sold it (with my advice on how to repair it..this was the second time I had to repair it. Not complex, but a nuisance nontheless).

This image is to show that with a dark location, a sharp lens wide open (rented), a simple tracker (no guiding) and a studiocamera that is totally unfit for high iso work, there is still hope :-)

In the field, I used a small battery powered headless PC (with a wifi VNC connection to my tablet) and Astrophotography Tool (APT) to sequence the acquisition. Flat frames by using a T-shirt and a tablet with a white screen.

AstroPixelProcessor (APP) was used to calibrate, register, integrate and color balance the 50MP images. Finishing touches in Photoshop CS6.

Imaged with APT

Please note: The following tables are updated every 24 hours.

Distribution of astrophotographers

This table shows the number of distinct astrophotographers who have been assigned and IOTD/TP award compared to the total number of images awarded.
	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
Top pick nominations

Distribution of subject types

This table shows the distribution of awards per subject type, compared to the popularity of images of that subject type.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

Distribution of data sources

This table shows the distribution of awards per data source, compared to the popularity of images acquired from that data source.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
Promotions by Submitters When 3 distinct Submitters promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for Top Pick status. This requirement, in addition to anonymization of images and distribution to only a subset of them, prevents biases and ensures that the best images are selected.
Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

Status	Basic success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	3282470
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

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The Pleiades area

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